PREFACE

The author of the following work is a man wellon in the fifties and lives—as he should—onhis native soil. Born in Steiermark, Austria, in alonely mountain region, he led the life of a forestpeasant until he reached the age of eighteen, whenhe became apprenticed to a travelling peasant tailor.On the expiration of this apprenticeship, whichcovered a period of four years, he spent other fouryears as charity scholar in the commercial school atGraz.

After these experiences, and after having masteredsuch a variety of subjects, he began to work atsomething which he not only had not mastered butwith which he was wholly unfamiliar—literature.He had always had a passion for books, but havingno money with which to buy them, he had madethem for himself.

In the peasant hut and in the workshop had beenbrought forth no less than twenty-four magnificentvolumes, closely written with ink made from soot,illustrated with lead-pencil, and painted inwater-colours with a brush made from his ownhair—édition de luxe! But worthy to be printed!—not asingle line.

Thus this youth had worked for ten long years,every Sunday, every holiday, and often late into thenight, by the light of a pine torch and in the midstof the noise of his house companions, who occupiedthe same room. The intellectual and spiritual lifeof the poor lad was a very lonely one.

He did not write for print; the innocent boyscarcely knew that books were already being printedin this age, for the most of those which he had seenwere old folios. He simply wrote to make twoout of one, to place himself before himself, in histhoughts, in poems, in all kinds of yarns and tales,that in his great loneliness he might at least have acomrade. Beyond this he did not think or strive,was happy rather than unhappy, cherishing a vaguehope that his life would at some time change.Whenever he asked himself what this change mightbe, he would calmly answer:—"Probably death."

But at this point things took a strange turn. Theyoung man was completely transformed; not onlyfrom boy to youth, from youth to man; he changednot his coat alone, but in his fustian jacket, in

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